Sustainable Communities

BB&K clients are accustomed to addressing issues of environmental sustainability in CEQA documents as they relate to air quality, land use, water supply and water quality.

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CEQA and Climate Change

Best Best &Krieger has successfully assisted clients through the process of ensuring that environmental documents appropriately address climate change impacts in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act and other legal requirements. The firm has also assisted clients with the preparation of climate action plans to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a jurisdiction-wide basis. In addition, BB&K has successfully defended countless environmental impact reports, negative declarations and similar documents – many of which were challenged on climate change grounds.

In 2006, the California Legislature enacted AB 32, requiring that the State’s greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. While there was initially much uncertainty about the need to analyze projects’ impacts relating to global climate change, CEQA regulations have since been updated to explicitly require environmental documents to evaluate when projects would, directly or indirectly generate greenhouse gas emissions that would have a significant effect on the environment or conflict with plans, regulations or policies adopted for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

It is now well settled that public agencies are required to examine, disclose and, potentially, mitigate their projects’ cumulative impacts on global climate change. CEQA expressly allows this analysis to proceed on either a qualitative or quantitative basis, though many agencies choose to review climate impacts both ways. They do so by describing emissions from a project’s vehicle trips, energy consumption and construction-related activities, as well as calculating the project’s direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbon, perfluorocarbon and sulfur hexafluoride.

While the requirement to analyze greenhouse gas emissions is fairly new, the analysis is performed in the same way as analysis of any other impact of CEQA concern: after amounts directly and indirectly generated by the project are quantified, those amounts are compared to applicable thresholds of significance. Based on this analysis, the lead agency makes a determination as to whether the project will result in significant impacts. If it will, the agency must also determine whether there are any feasible mitigation measures that can reduce this impact.

CEQA and Energy Supply

Agencies should approach the environmental impact report analysis to energy supply with greater sophistication than they did prior to the enactment of AB 32 and subsequent regulations relating to greenhouse gas emissions. For example, a statement simply indicating which energy provider will service development may not be advisable, especially where energy supply may be inhibited by the utility's generation capacity or where the energy provider has a broad portfolio of energy sources. Appendix F to the State CEQA Guidelines provides specific recommendations regarding factors to consider when analyzing project's energy impacts, such as transportation energy use, the effect of the project on local and regional energy supply and the types of energy that may be consumed during construction and operation of the project. Lead agencies may also choose to consider regional or statewide energy conservation targets, or other energy conservation goals set forth in applicable utility plans.